"the following is a conversation with carl hart department chair and professor of psychology at columbia university he's the author of several books on the topic of drugs including his most recent call..."

"his ideas are controversial but are fundamentally grounded in empirical data and rigorous scientific studies i don't know if his conclusions are right but they are at least worth thinking about so i a..."

"ask what is the experience of taking heroin like what happens to the body what happens to the mind when you take it well you know i take mdma cannabis and all the rest of these drugs too i've tried th..."

"this is a mistake that people make all the time they try to act as if biology is the only determinant of drug effects and that's just not how it works uh you need the environment you need the cage as ..."

"about it so we can talk about opioids and then we can talk about endogenous opioid system in the brain we can talk about dopamine and other sort of monoamine transmitters and and what uh opioids are d..."

"landscape of experiences that contribute to how you actually feel when you take a drug right on so all of those things are important but you know like if someone had trauma in childhood and they did t..."

"i just enjoy that moment i'm there i'm not thinking about a bill that i didn't paid i'm not thinking about oh i forgot to do this for my kid i'm not thinking about that because all of those things are..."

"i had been indoctrinated to be biased toward the negative effects of drug use but over the past two plus decades i had gained a deeper more nuanced understanding these words are very counterintuitive ..."

"will have a better time so anxiety is the big one you need to remove the anxiety anxiety is critical it's huge many of the negative effects that we see with drugs have to do with anxiety and not neces..."

"about people who write tv shows um the people who write movies uh most of the stuff written by drugs is just bullshit um i think about i love going to watch comedians and the comedians when they talk ..."

"damnit everything that's in film on television and it's like what's wrong with you people so why aren't there not more stories of grown-ups using drugs the full spectrum of drugs that we're talking ab..."

"good thing so how are you supposed to like somebody like me somebody like joe how are you supposed to understand what the dangers are what the negative effects are so you said automobile relationships..."

"more and more you're starting to get a lot of stories on uh sec of the psychedelics of different kinds there's um psilocybin where you have uh mushrooms or even mdma used sort of positively there's ki..."

"what these stories are they're in the same vein as those kind of stories as pinocchio um you know like you said when you were learning about alcohol you were told what to do what not to do so forth th..."

"saying it's there in the literature i mean at a place like columbia we give these drugs thousands of doses every year do you think we would be doing this and we do this with research grants that's pub..."

"collecting the data we're collecting the data it to help us with treatment if someone is having problems with these data hopefully we'll uh understand more about the how to help them deal with their p..."

"that really concerns me about like heroin use really is constipation so if people uh are using uh heroin on a regular basis and then they have a sort of slowing of their gut motility they're in they'r..."

"not so much the environment but there are people who for example they have chronic unrealistic expectations heaped on them and those people are more likely to have some problems with drugs there are p..."

"problem see i'm operating from limited personal evidence well this is a problem though but we have a scientific database yeah we don't need personal evidence for this we have in my book i try to go th..."

"let me ask you the question of legalization so should in your view all drugs be legalized the drugs that people seek certainly should be legally regulated and available to adults so when i say the dru..."

"that you have in each unit um all can minimize harm based on how you do these things and we can do that we have the technology we have the know-how so you're actually making me think about alcohol a l..."

"throw people in a while that's stupid i gotta tell you i mean for me and even given your book and for people listening to this it's still it's still tough to hear that the thing we should be concerned..."

"book i am uh responsible to you um as a citizen um and we're in this together and i tried to make that point in the book and people have conveniently ignored things like that do you think the war on d..."

"so many questions i want to ask you because you're challenging a lot of beliefs that people have about drugs about society in general so it's difficult for me to ask the right questions here but if yo..."

"yeah the the arresting for drug use or anything drug related is absurd especially in the context of how destructive alcohol is and tobacco alcohol can be destructive to some people but alcohol also is..."

"that too obviously that's why i'm out here and putting subjecting myself to this sort of criticism and so forth but because i believe that truth ultimately wins out but i might be wrong but uh i have ..."

"this sort of approach that we have where we say we're only exclusively presenting the harmful effects and that should make people keep people safe i just have a problem with that but i i certainly i i..."

"are rubbish what uh can you just elaborate like technically what the term addiction means that you're referring to when i use the term addiction i'm referring to the diagnostics this statistical manua..."

"we all are speaking the same language we're not saying that simply because this person used heroin they are an addict that's not what we're saying you have to meet these criteria where you have disrup..."

"from your understanding as a scientist from your understanding is a human who studies human nature why does it take so long to treat to to to deal with that uh addiction well you you cited alcohol ano..."

"no disrespect to aaa because i think what they do is a lot more than what some people do because at least they have the social these social interactions you have a social group um that's better than w..."

"that and that's absolutely fantastic um all i argue is that um if that kind of thing happens for you with ayahuasca facili with psilocybin with some other psychedelic why isn't it possible that heroin..."

"with what you find or what you find will do to you so let me ask how has drug use or the study of drugs change you as a human being uh it just helped me think about other people's experience right so ..."

"feel so strongly about this thing because i know there are people getting paid and their paycheck is predicated on subjugating and the suffering of those other people so when we hear about the destruc..."

"that's what this whole drug thing is about it's the okie doke people um it really boils down to just simple thing we're all similar in that we're all just trying to live our life trying to take care o..."

"have to face myself have i lived honestly and if i can't face myself then uh what am i doing here um you know that's how i i see it one of the things that people don't really talk about with drugs and..."

"the fact that drugs are used as scapegoat to uh to not alleviate the suffering of certain communities so those two those two things come up one one of the sort of main points of the book two was to tr..."

"told to do and i was ignorant and and thought i was doing the right thing and i did what i was told to do and so just like these guys are doing what they're told to do but no i my real beef is with th..."

"a wide range of other sort of how neural transmission happens because of drugs and so that's a really valuable tool lessons for me uh but then when we think that we uh move out a bit and we think more..."

"your body like they help you evaluate yourself from like a third person perspective it's almost like you have a consciousness in here and you get to step outside of it a little bit i mean that's kind ..."

"it's sad and people know this a lot of middle to upper class people know this the illicit drug trade business is a multi-million dollar industry multi-billion dollar industry that could not be support..."

"who know absolutely so that's the main thing that i would encourage people to do really know your craft if you know your craft um and then maybe you will be a service to your fellow citizens there are..."

"i'm sorry i certainly hope it has meaning i mean i'm i'm certainly trying to live mind like it has meaning you know um i really love my life now i just got back from geneva um i spent the summer abroa..."